I got back from a very enjoyable break in Tunisia a couple of days ago. I would recommend it. The wry, urbane hipsters who make up most of my readership won't be interested in anything as predictable as my holiday snaps but if anyone else is you can find them on Flickr.
I had hoped to bring back lots of Tunisian music to share with you but failed dismally. I searched high, low and in between for CDs or old LPs but found none. Not a merguez.
So instead we are catching up again with one of the bands that featured when the African Odyssey bandwagon rolled through town a few months back - Carthago, the disco kings who wowed the crowds in the clubs of Tunis and Sousse back in the day.
Carthago were formed in the late 1970s by former members of Dalton and Marhaba Band, and we have a track from each of them as well. The first two tunes come courtesy of Habibi Funk, the other courtesy of the nice person who posted it on YouTube.
For the video I thought about selecting something by the first queen of Carthage but decided to spare you from that. Instead we've gone with the band named after the delightful village next door to Carthage that hailed from the equally delightful Lewisham.
We have made it to Tunisia, a country I will be visiting for the first time in real life in January. I have a bit of free time and Tunis is only three hours flying time from London, so I thought I would pop over and have a nose around.
The music we have for you today fits the description "interesting and varied". It has taken a fair bit of digging to find the variety, as most of the Tunisian music available on Bandcamp and the like is death metal and rather dull electronica. But I think it was worth it.
We will commence proceedings with a track from the only Tunisian CD in my collection, "Sans Visa" by Ouled Jouini. They were formed in 1983 under the leadership of Farhat Jouini and this album came out in 2005.
Beyond that I don't have much to tell you - the sleevenotes on the CD are so minimal they don't even name the other members of the band. There is no sign of any new music since 2005 but they pop up on lots of 'Tunisian Hits of the 1990s' compilations, so my guess is that was when they were in their pomp.
Perhaps the most interesting of today's artists is Badiâa Bouhrizi, who also performs as Neysatu (in which capacity she contributed to "Adrian Sherwood Presents: Dub No Frontiers", one of my favourite albums of 2022, and previously to the On-U compilation "Pay It All Back Vol 7"). She describes her style as “the new sound of Northern Africa”, and as a mixture of local traditional and classical Arabic music with a touch of jazz, funk, neo-soul, electronica and reggae.
The chosen track comes from her album "KahruMusiqa", the first music she has released under her own name. Although the album only came out last year it is actually a collection of home recordings she made in the 2000s. Many of the tracks are settings of poems by various female Arab writers.
Another distinctive but very different female voice next. Mara'a Borkan are a band. Their name means Volcano Woman. That's all I've got. They make a blistering racket though and the singer will knock your socks off. This track is on one of two releases put out through 'a world divided' (all trendy lower case) in 2020, although the band had previously released it themselves in 2015.
You may feel in the need of something a bit smoother after that to calm you down. I am happy to oblige with this groovy tune from Carthago, a band formed in the late 1970s when two of the funkiest combos in old Tunis town (Marhaba Band and the oddly named Dalton) teamed up to ride the disco wave. You can find this on an EP issued by the Habibi Funk label, whose catalogue has featured many times already on the tour.
Bringing the funkiness forward in time is Ammar 808, aka Sofyann Ben Youssef. He was apparently "the sonic mastermind behind the Tunisian sensation Bargou 08" (no, me neither). In 2018 he teamed up with a few singers from Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia with the intention of giving traditional North African music a boot up the arse. The resulting album was called "Maghreb United" and the featured vocalist on this track is his fellow Tunisian Chen Hassan Tej.
Which brings us to Chedly Taghouti, "un acteur et chanteur diplômé de l'Institut d'Art Dramatique de Tunis, a exploré la synergie entre musique et théâtre". Which is all well and good but that isn't why he is here. It is because earlier this year he put out an MAR record called "Give Energy", enabling us to tick that particular box.
When we were in Tanzania recently we kicked off the videos with a lad from Zanzibar who had a fair bit of success after moving to England and changing his name. Following that example, we commence today with the former Elli Robert Fitoussi, all the way from Menzel Bourguiba.
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